My question involves criminal law for the state of: Ohio
Hi, I have a general 'what can I do???' question.
Here's my story: A friend and I were on trail bikes on the road. A cop traveling towards us turned their lights on (there was other traffic around too). We went off road (through a known off road area), popped out the other side and these cops stop us, arrest us, charge us with "2921.331 Failure to comply with order or signal of police officer". As a class A misd. (aswell as citations for bike things too - those I understand)
Cop's story: He signaled AT us with his lights just before we went off road and we fled into an area that the police car couldn't follow us into.
We didn't do anything erratic, we didn't speed away when we went off road. We were really close to the off road entrance when he turned his lights on. We just continued our journey. And when they stopped us on the other side we complied immediately - and they were quite aggressive with their attitudes. Like we'd tried to start a high speed chase or something - they didn't want to listen to us.
How were we meant to figure out that the lights were for us? There was no other signal from the cop, he just turned his lights on while traveling towards us. How are we meant to figure out his intentions from that? He could be doing anything...And I'm sure there's no requirement for us to pause our journey and hang around to figure out a police officer's intentions when he's not really clear about what he's trying to say with his lights?
Does that work as a defense?
What is the worse case outcome of this? I assume some license suspension? Is there any lesser 'related' offense that isn't a class a misd?

